Home Care In Brady, TX

SAN ANGELO, Texas — Many students say goodbye to their parents in the mornings once they head to school. But for this father/daughter duo, it doesn’t just stop once Addyson Easterwood leaves the house for school. Her dad, Shay Easterwood, is the head football coach and athletic director at Brady High School, all while being a Bulldog alumni.

“Dad, I just want to leave a legacy behind in Brady, Texas,” Shay Easterwood said when talking about his daughter.

This is what senior four sport athlete Addyson Easterwood told her father just a few weeks ago.

“It’s always like he’s my comfort. I’ve never really been nervous about going to a new school or going really anywhere, because I’ve always had either one or both my parents on campus with me,” said Addyson Easterwood about having her dad on campus with her. “So, it’s always been fun, and I just really enjoy it.”

“Her mom and I, and sister, are very blessed and inspired by her,” Shay Easterwood expressed.

Addyson Easterwood has stacked on the accolades during her time as a Bulldog.

“Honestly, because of her work ethic, she’s been through a lot of trials and tribulations in her life, on the athletic fields and courts, and various things, and just in life in general, the ups and downs of life, and man, she has persevered through those and become an amazing young lady, and we’re super proud of her.”

Being a Bulldog means a lot to Addyson when it comes to her family, a family full of Bulldogs, but she also wants to follow in her parent’s footsteps when it comes to the next chapter of her life.

“My grandparents graduated from here in Brady, my dad graduated, my mom graduated, so being the third generation graduating from Brady high school is pretty awesome. Then carrying on my parent’s legacy of going to Texas Tech is just even more awesome, because I love Texas Tech and I’ve grown up bleeding red and black,” Addyson Easterwood said about her time in Brady and the near future.

With one door closing as a Bulldog and another one opening as a Red Raider with a plan, one thing will remain the same. She will always go back to her dad about anything and everything that happens up in Raiderland.

“Football games,” was the first thing that came to Addyson Easterwood’s mind when calling her dad up in Lubbock. “Anything, I’m probably going to call my dad, because he’s just going to be over the moon, proud of me, so definitely when I get to be on the sidelines as a trainer at Texas Tech University.”

“When she got to meet Joey McGuire at the women’s basketball game, and him telling her if you get the athletic training internship that you’ve applied for, man, we’re going to have a lot of fun out here, I think it kind of has set in,” Shay Easterwood said about his daughter going on to college.

“I don’t want to admit it too loud, but I really do think it has set in, and I think she’s going to have an amazing time in Lubbock, Texas, and she’s really going to do some great things.” Shay Easterwood said about the realization of his daughter going off to college soon.

Brady – Smack dab in the center of the Lone Star State sits Brady. With a population of around 5,000 folks, it’s by no means a big town. But it does have one big store that brings in a bunch of folks. It’s called D&J’s Good Ole Days and if you plan on stopping by it might just take you days to see it all.

DeAnn Evridge is the D of D&J Antiques, and the J is her husband, Joe. They opened this business filled with heirlooms and oddities back in 2010 to fill the time during retirement. “We decided to open a little antique store and just be open one or two days a week. And now it’s gone to six days a week full time, and sometimes we’re open on Sunday afternoons,” DeAnn said.

Interesting store. “Yeah, I would say so. Hope so. It keeps people coming.” Yeah. You never know what you’re going to find here. “That’s right. Well, you want it to be a surprise every time you round a corner.” Some scary stuff, some unique stuff, some odd stuff, some interesting stuff. You run the gamut here. “We like to say we have it all,” joked DeAnn.

From creepy doll heads to random family photos to disposable cameras, the selection at D&J is one of the most off-the-wall collections I’ve ever come across. It does make you wonder, who would want this stuff? “We want a uniqueness to our store,” DeAnn said. “We don’t want something that you’re going to see in every other store in town. It’s kind of our calling card.”

To decide what to carry in the store, DeAnn and Joe must love it. If they don’t like it, it doesn’t matter how much it’s going to sell. They don’t have it unless they love it. One of their most prominent collections is that of prosthetic eyeballs. “We’ve got quite a few. So, you can pick out your color. You can pick out whether or not you want busted veins in your eyes, depending on whether or not you had a hard night. You want it to match your other eye,” said DeAnn while rummaging thought the collection. Never did I realize that fake eyes had so many options.

This crazy, unique, random stuff are things you can’t find on the internet. While they are working on a website, they don’t have many items listed on there because they like to have one-of-a-kind items which can be hard to do on the internet. “When we opened at first, we realized there was going to be a real big calling for oddities and unusual things. We’re on the road from here to Austin,” DeAnn said. “So, you know you got to help keep it weird a little bit.”

Most of their unique items come from word of mouth. People drive up every day with their trucks or cars full of stuff. DeAnn and Joe have even bought a couple of houses with everything in it!

Here in the heart of Texas, seeing the center of the Lone Star State only takes a few minutes but diving into everything at D&J Antiques, well, that will take some time and it’s time well spent on The Texas Bucket List.

Brady – Towns in Texas are known for their way of life. Close knit communities where neighbors care for one another. You see, Texans have a lot of heart and things aren’t any different in Brady. “Brady is a great little town that is very, very friendly,” said Brady mayor Tony Groves.

Groves has been mayor of Brady since 2013 and his biggest lesson after 8 years in public office. “If people like you, you can make lots of mistakes,” joked Tony.

Tony is a native son of this little town but is by no means a career politician. He served in the Air Force for 30 years flying F16’s. “I loved it. Yeah. I would have stayed 40 years or longer if they’d have let me, but 30 years is when I timed out,” said Tony.

Tony oversees this small community that happens to have a big heart and a whole lot of other amenities. “We own an airport. We own a lake, a golf course, swimming pool, all kinds of things,” said Tony.

If you’ve ever wanted to be deep in the heart of Texas, Brady is pretty much where you need to be. “We’re very proud of being the heart of Texas,” stated DeAnn Evridge, a Brady local. “I think it’s a great location. We’re not too far from Austin, not too far from Angelo, but around here we’ve got plenty of room and only three red lights,” said Billy Adams, a Brady local. “Being the heart of Texas is pleasant, it’s friendly and it’s relaxing,” said Tony.

Now Brady isn’t exactly smack dap in the middle of our state but it’s the town closest to the mark. You see the actual location is a few miles up US-377. There you can climb a watch tower and see nothing but Texas in all its glory surrounding you! While you gaze over our great state, you can’t help but feel like you’ve made it to the center of the universe and for me it did fill my soul. “Nothing exciting to see off there except a lot of mesquite and a reasonable amount of prickly pear,” joked Tony. I think Mayor Tony would rather be in Brady.

“It’s kind of bragging rights. There’s a song “Deep in The Heart of Texas” and a lot of people in Brady take that seriously,” said Grant Evridge, a Brady local.

Being the official heart of Texas is a title Brady takes pretty seriously but the only time Mayor Tony will be politically correct, it’s about talking about the size of the ticker of Texas. “It’s not very friendly to argue with folks about, ‘Who’s the real heart of Texas?’ The heart of Texas is big,” expressed Tony. Other folks, not so much. “There are other communities in the state that are not near the center that claim they’re the center, but they’re not, we are. We’re the geographical center of Texas and proud of it,” said Grant.

Fortunately, we can all be winners with a trip to the center of our state, to see the geographical center of Texas and sync our hearts as one right here in the Lone Star State. “We just welcome everyone with open arms, and I think that’s not everywhere you go. So, we want that to be a really memorable experience,” said DeAnn. “It’s a good place to stop and catch your breath as you move on, and in, whichever direction you go: north, south, east or west,” stated Tony.

Ninety-year-old Louise Long sat down to enjoy a free burger with her girlfriends on a recent weekday afternoon at the Tractor Supply store in Brady, Texas. Long owns a real estate business in town and she keeps hearing about more layoffs at the sand mines, which has her worried.

“Those sand plants have been here for so long and so many people work for the sand plants. We’re going to suffer for it for a long time,” she said.

For about 60 years, the sandy soils of McCulloch County were the go-to source of sand for energy companies that needed it to get oil and gas out of the ground. But the market for McCulloch County sand has been drying up.

Late last year, McCullouch County had seven sand mines in operation. Now it’s down to two.

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When the fracking boom hit the U.S. a couple of decades ago, with the Permian Basin in west Texas as ground zero, oil companies started using a lot more sand to blast oil and gas out of the ground. “Brady Brown,” as the sand had come to be known, was the standard. The grains of sand were strong, the right shape and held up under the extreme pressure of fracking.

But when oil prices dropped dramatically five years ago, companies had to figure out a way to cut costs. So they started testing Permian Basin sand, which they didn’t have to truck in from 200 miles away.

“I found the strength of it to be as good as the sand they have here,” said Rick Althof, a Brady resident who used to run quality control at a sand mine in town owned by oil company Pioneer Natural Resources. “Now, it wasn’t quite as round, but it’s obviously working or they wouldn’t be using it.”

These days, Pioneer harvests most of its sand in west Texas, saving hundreds of millions of dollars a year. The company used to employ hundreds of people in Brady but is currently down to just a skeleton crew. Pioneer says it will shut its Brady sand mine by the end of this month.

“The plant I was at closed on April 1,” said Ryan Adams. He was making about $80,000 a year as a plant manager at Cadre Proppant in Brady, where the median annual income is about $35,000. Adams quit his sand industry post in December to open a classic car restoration company. He said he saw the writing on the wall.

“They kept saying they were going to extend it for, you know, it might be July or we can run it another year and all this and I could just see through it,” he said.

Adams said the company offered him a $150,000 salary, plus bonuses, to move out to west Texas to run a sand plant there. He wasn’t interested, but that’s what a lot of people in Brady are doing — taking job transfers and spending half their time living away from their families in the Permian Basin.

The closure of the sand plants in Brady extends far beyond the mining industry.

Sherry Tally used to do the books for Texan Truck Wash, which cleaned 18-wheelers that hauled sand out of Brady. It had to close a few weeks ago.

“When you rely totally on truck traffic and you’ve got so many sand plants that have closed, we just couldn’t do it,” she said.

Tally has lived in Brady for more than 20 years and said she couldn’t imagine the sand industry not being a vital part of the town’s economy. She says a lot of people have had to cut back on spending.

“You don’t just go out to eat and everything all time, like you did,” she said. “I feel sorry for the merchants out here, but what do you do?”

She expects more businesses, especially retailers, will have to shut their doors soon.

Local officials are debating whether to offer tax incentives to lure other industries to Brady. Mayor Tony Groves wonders whether the town could rebrand itself as a hill country tourist destination — a place for a little R&R for people from Dallas and Houston.

“Instead of being a mining town, is there potential that Brady becomes the stress elimination center for this part of Texas?” Groves asked.

Right now, Brady is nothing but stress as jobs keep moving west. Just this month, two companies have announced further layoffs. More are expected.

A curious Texan wanted to know where it was, setting off a debate between two towns in the heart of the state

September 27, 2021

Texas is so big, the landmarks available to visit seem endless: the Alamo, the State Capitol, and the State Fair’s Big Tex, just to name a few. Millions visit them every year. Still, there’s one somewhat obscure landmark that’s at the center of all things Texas that countless motorists pass by all the time without even a notice.

But if you’re as observant as Douglas McMurrain, it’s a must stop.

“I was just driving up north to see some family, and I passed it on my way up and coming back thought I might as well stop and take a picture of it,” he says.

Since 1963, in-the-know motorists like McMurrain have pulled over to take in the tourist information marker placed on the east side of US 377 between the small cities of Brownwood and Brady proclaiming this the “Geographic Center of Texas.”

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“It’s a big state, for sure,” says McMurrain, who’s originally from Colorado and currently serves at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio. After a selfie, he takes in the quick geography lesson on the metal plaque, then heads on his way.

I first became aware of the marker in 1975, thanks to my dad, a proud Texan who loved to travel and took me to see it. More than 45 years later, I’ve made the pilgrimage once again, bringing my wife this time. Things look just as they did, except for the slight crack near the bottom of the marker that’s been soldered together, perhaps caused by the weight of the impressive statistics shared. For instance, the marker notes that Texas comprises 7.4% of the total area of the United States.

“Fifteen of the 50 states could be readily accommodated within Texas’ borders—with more than 1,000 square miles left over,” the text explains, while also sharing the straight-line distance to the furthest points in each direction. The most westerly point noted on the marker is along the Rio Grande River above El Paso, for instance, some 437 miles away.

This is old hat to my wife, who has visited this place many times before as a kid growing up around these parts. When she posts the photo I took of her at the marker on Facebook, a friend of ours, Sheryl Kirchner, replies with some local lore. She reminds us that her father was with the Texas Highway Department when they installed this mini-yet-significant marker.

“The initial reason that they found the geographical center of Texas was because Brady and Brownwood were fighting over the right to use the slogan ‘Heart of Texas,’” she says. “Brady won because they were closer.”

Those in Brady understandably claim the title “Heart of Texas,” as displayed proudly on a stone monument outside the McCulloch County Courthouse. Brady is 19.5 miles southwest of the marker, while Brownwood is 24 miles to the northeast.

Now, it’s important to note that the marker was not placed at the exact center of the state. That’s 5 miles northwest on private property, the marker points out. So, if you visit the marker, you’ll also want to drive about a quarter of a mile south and pull into the Heart of Texas Park, complete with a few picnic tables and a small observation tower you can climb to see the true center amid the rolling hills, oak and mesquite trees, round hay bales, and cattle.

And just how do you determine the center of such a massive state? The marker explains it’s an imaginary point “whose coordinates divide the state into four equal areas.” According to Bill O’Hara, president of the Texas Society of Professional Surveyors, at some point in the 1930s a citizen wrote a letter inquiring about the location. and in response, the Texas General Land Office traced the geographic center to a private ranch in McCullough County.

In the early 1990s, surveyors were given permission to hold a seminar on that ranch by the landowners, who were curious about finding the exact spot on their property. Doing what surveyors do, they confirmed the precise location based on the General Land Office’s criteria outlined in that letter. O’Hara says there’s now a small stone marker placed at the exact spot that only the landowners can see and admire.

“And from that spot, the distance to either Brady or Brownwood is about the same,” O’Hara estimates.

And while that might encourage more friendly debate, there’s no debating a stop at this historical marker that’s as close as the public can get to the exact geographic center will make anyone appreciate the majesty of the Lone Star State.